much is written and said about the selection or nomination of chuck hagel and john kerry as part of the president's circle in determining what to do with afghanistan or with the troop levels in afghanistan moving ahead. >> that's right, tamron. and i think that the pressure on the president internally within his own administration to keep those numbers very low will be fairly considerable. last year, we were led to believe that there would be remaining force post-2014 of 10,000 to 15,000. i think today you should probably look at a 3,000 to 6,000 force. but what i thought was interesting about the press conference, tamron, was that while the president described the role of those forces in very narrow terms, continuing the training and doing a counter terrorism operation when needed against al qaeda remnants, what he didn't say was what's the main purpose of having those forces remain in afghanistan? i think it's two fold. one of them is to keep the taliban which will certainly come back in the rural areas and has ready from taking over kabul and so it's sort of a trip wire for that, the